Chinese university faculty supervisors’ academic identity construction in online profiles

Abstract

Faculty supervisor profiles on the graduate school webpages of universities offer an explicit assertion of self-representation regarding the author’s academic identity, from which potential graduates can gain official information about their future faculty supervisors. Though scholars’ identity construction on blogs or homepages has drawn sufficient attention, supervisors’ identity construction on graduate school webpages across authors’ status, gender, and disciplines in the Chinese context has not been sufficient. Based on the analysis of moves and processes, this study explores academic identity construction across authors’ status, gender, and disciplines. Professor/Ph.D. faculty supervisors (PPSs) generally tend to use more moves than associate professors/master supervisors (APMs); different relational and material processes are used most frequently for scholars of different statuses. For gender, male academics use more words than females for move and process items. For disciplinary differences, art scholars pay close attention to education, achievement and community service, presenting more relational processes, while history and telecommunications scholars concentrate on their research directions and main publications. The results are further discussed with reference to status advantage, women’s dilemma, and disciplinary culture in the Chinese academic community.